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A long shot: Secretary of State John Kerry looks out a helicopter window during his latest trip to the Middle East in pursuit of peace talks. Photo: Reuters

Egypt is in turmoil while Syria is fragmenting into ungoverned “territories” and Lebanon is inching toward civil war. Iran is setting the stage for another diplomatic rope trick to speed up its nuclear project and jihadists are reappearing in Iraq’s Arab Sunni provinces. Washington’s closest regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are falling out over Egypt and Syria.

Well, that’s the Middle East, you might say, and it should be no surprise that John Kerry has visited it six times in his first five months as secretary of state.

The trouble is, Kerry’s visits had little to do with real threats to the region’s stability. He visited in pursuit of an old chimera: peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That he has now persuaded both sides to agree to talk about possible peace talks is even less impressive than it seems.

Kerry says he’s spent months “listening to all sides.” The result is the mysterious “package of ideas” he has presented to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government.

Anyone could’ve told Kerry that he was not only wasting his time but might actually diminish chances of peace. He should’ve read the notes left by another Democratic ex-senator, George Mitchell, who was dispatched by President Obama early in his first term with the mission to create a Palestinian state within a year.

Mitchell quickly found that a peace settlement was not a priority for either protagonist. He also knew that, in his final months in office, President Bill Clinton had brokered the best deal imaginable within reason but failed to persuade Yasser Arafat to accept it.

The Mitchell mission failed because there was no active and urgent demand for peace. Today, there’s not even demand. A status quo has been established and both sides are comfortable with it.

This doesn’t mean that Palestinians and Israelis don’t suffer. They do, albeit in different ways. Nor does it mean that Palestinians and Israelis don’t want peace. They do, albeit with different definitions of “peace.” However, weighing the risks of a “golden” unknown against the certainties of the status quo, most Palestinians and Israelis tend to prefer the latter.

The Israel-Palestine problem has a regional dimension as well. From the 1940s to the 1990s, that regional dimension excluded any serious attempt at peace-making. Most Arab states wanted the Palestinian “cause” to remain alive and active; they had an interest in supporting Palestinian groups opposed to peace with Israel.

The current upheaval in Arab countries has plunged that regional dimension into uncertainty. Today, no one is actively interested in the Palestinian issue. Those who follow the Arab media would know that Palestine has all but disappeared even from public discourse. Thus, the regional dimension can’t be used as a lever either for war or peace.

Of course, if the new Middle East emerges as a more or less democratic space, solving the Israel-Palestine problem could become easier.

Thus, Kerry and, more importantly, Obama should focus their energies on helping the Middle East shed its despotic political culture and take the path of democratization. That, however, requires a clarity of vision and real commitment of intellectual and material resources to tackle the Herculean task of unchaining the peoples of the region.

Obama and Kerry aren’t ready to deploy the United States’ immense moral, economic, political and military power in support of such a task. They’re still debating whether or not the military coup in Egypt was actually a coup; the State Department says it is no longer sure whether the Taliban could be described as “terrorist,” and Obama fixes “red lines” on Syria but ends up pressuring US allies not to supply arms to anti-Assad rebels.

Kerry keeps repeating that “time is running out,” whereas, in fact, the only thing that never runs out is time. What is running out is the credibility of the Obama-Kerry tandem as serious leaders.

Palestinians tell me that Kerry’s “package” is a jumble of contradictions. For example, he promises to stop Jewish settlement in exchange for recognizing Israel as a “Jewish” state.

Kerry’s mission is twofold: to divert attention from Washington’s failure to even understand what’s happening in the Middle East, and, to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to agree to “talk about talks.”

That would let the Obama-Kerry duo claim they succeeded in restarting “the peace process” after winning the support of the Arab League. That the league, split three ways on a range of issues, is no longer a functioning entity is quietly forgotten.

However, no one in the region is ready to play the game.

“Kerry’s move does not make us angry,” says a Palestinian parliament member. “It only makes us yawn.”